The new art of writing plays

The New Art of Writing Plays

PUBLIC AT IONS

of the

Dramatic Museum

OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK

First Seriei

Papers on Playmaking :

I THE NEW ART OF WRITING PLAYS. By
Lope de Vega. Translated by William T.
Brewster. With an Introduction and
Notes by Brander Matthews.

II THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PLAY. By
Bronson Howard. With an Introduc-
tion by Augustus Thomas.

III THE LAW OF THE DRAMA. By Ferdinand
Brunetiere. Translated by Philip M.
Hayden. With an Introduction by Henry
Arthur Jones.

IV ROBERT Louis STEVENSON AS A DRAMATIST.
By Arthur Wing Pinero. With an Intro-
duction and Bibliographical Appendix by
Clayton Hamilton.

PAPERS ON PLAY-MAKING

I

The New Art of Writing Plays

BY

LOPE DE VEGA

TRANSLATED BY

WILLIAM T. BREWSTER

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
BRANDER MATTHEWS

Printed for the

Dramatic Museum of Columbia University

in the City of New York
MCMXIV

5

COPYRIGHT 1914 BY
DRAMATIC MUSEUM OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

CONTENTS

Introduction by Brander Matthews i

The New Art of Writing Plays by Lope de Vega. . 23

Notes by B. M 4 !

INTRODUCTION

BY a significant coincidence the marvel-
lous outflowering of the drama is si-
multaneous in Spanish literature and
in English. Spain almost exhausted her im-
mense resources in fitting out the invincible
Armada; and England strained every nerve
to compass the defeat of the dread fleet.
Lope de Vega, the foremost of the Iberian
playwrights, actually sailed as a soldier on
the fatal voyage to the English channel; and
it is dimly possible that Shakspere also saw
service on blue water; the year of the run-
ning sea fight is one of those in his biography
about which we have no information, and his
use of sea-terms has been declared by an
expert to be scientifically accurate. In this
simultaneous development of the drama in
England and in Spain at the moment when
the energy of the two peoples was aroused
to the utmost, we have a confirmation of
Brunetiere's theory that the foundation of
our pleasure in the playhouse is the assertion
of the human will.

Shakspere came forward after the Eng-
lish drama had already developed a variety
of forms; and he found the road broken
for him by Marlowe and Kyd, by Lyly and
Greene. At first he followed in their foot-
steps, however far beyond them he was to
advance in the end. Lope de Vega, on the
other hand, was a pioneer; he it was who
blazed the new trails in which all the suc-
ceeding playwrights of Spain gladly trod.
Shakspere seems to have cared little for in-
vention, borrowing his plots anywhere and
everywhere, and reserving his imagination
for the interpretation of tales first told by
others. Lope, on the other hand again,
abounded rather in invention than in the in-
terpreting imagination; he was wonderfully
fecund and prolific, unsurpassed in produc-
tivity even by Defoe or Dumas. It was
he who made the pattern that Calderon ana
all the rest were to employ. It was he who
worked out the formula of the Spanish
comedia, often not a comedy at all in our
English understanding of the term, but
rather a play of intrigue, peopled with hot-
blooded heroes who wore their hearts on

their sleeves and who carried their hands on
the hilts of their swords.

Where Lope de Vega and Shakspere are
again alike is that they both wrote all their
plays for the popular theater, apparently
composing these pieces solely with a view to
performance and caring nothing for any
praise which might be derived from publica-
tion. Martinenche, in his study of the
'Comedia Espagnole' (p. 243, note) dwells
on Lope's carelessness for the literary re-
nown to be won by the printing of his dra-
matic poems; in his non-dramatic poems he
took pride, just as Shakspere seems to have
read carefully the proofs of his lyrical nar-
ratives altho he did not himself choose to
publish a single one of his plays. And Mo-
liere, it may be noted, tells us frankly that
he was completely satisfied with the success
of his earlier pieces on the stage, and that
he had been content to leave them unprinted
until his hand was forced by a pirate-pub-
lisher.

Shakspere is abundant in his allusions to
the art of acting and reticent in his illusions
to the art of playmaking. In fact, there is
no single recorded expression of his opinion

3

in regard to the principles or the practice of
dramaturgy; and here he is in marked con-
trast with Ben Jonson, who had a body of
doctrine about the drama, which he set forth
in his 'Discoveries' and in his prologs, as
well as in his conversations with Drummond
of Hawthornden. In general Lope's attitude
toward dramaturgic theory is the same as
Shakspere's; but on one occasion he was in-
duced to discuss the principles of the art
he adorned, and to express his opinions upon
its methods. This single occasion was when
he was persuaded to deliver a poetic address
upon the 'New Art of Making Plays in This
Age.'

This 'Arte neuvo de hazer comedias en
este tiempo' was originally published in the
'Rimas' of Lope de Vega, Madrid, 1609. A
facsimile reprint was issued by Mr. Archer
M. Huntington in New York in 1903. A
critical edition with an introduction and
notes by A. Morel-Fatio appeared in the
Bulletin Hispanique for October-December,
190.4 and also in a separate pamphlet. The
French editor accepts the year of publication
as probably the year of delivery; and he
believes the Academy of Madrid, before

4

whom the poem was read, to be "no doubt
one of those literary assemblies, imitated
from those flourishing in Italy and holding
their meetings at the house of some cultivated
gentleman."

Lope's metrical address is plainly a re-
mote imitation of Horace's epistle to the .
Pisos, the model of countless critical codes
cast into verse. It is the chief Spanish ex-
ample of this type, as Boileau's 'Art
Poetique' is the chief French example and
Pope's 'Essay on Criticism' the chief English
example. While most of these Horatian
imitations have for their main topic poetry
and more especially dramatic poetry, at-
tempts were not lacking to borrow the fa-
miliar form for non-literary themes; and as
a result there are a host of poems in all the
modern tongues on the 'Art of War' and the
'Art of Painting,' on the 'Art of Bookbind-
ing' and on the 'Art of Cookery.' Even so
late as the first half of the nineteenth cen-
tury Samson (of the Comedie-Fran^aise)
condensed his histrionic advice into riming
couplets on the 'Art of Acting.'

Most of those imitations of Horace's di-
dactic poem which deal with poetry and the

5

drama borrow from the Latin lyrist not only
their method but also much of their material.
The supersubtle Italian theorists of the
theater were relying on Horace even when
they supposed that they were interpreting
Aristotle; and these expounders of Horace
had elaborated legislative enactments for the
theater which were readily accepted by all
_who desired the purification of the drama.
Tim Classicist code of rules for playwrights
was mainly negative; it was made up largely
of restrictions upon the poet's freedom ; it or-
dered him to do a few things but it forbad
him to do many things. It prescribed the
I total separation of tragedy and comedy, ad- j
' mitting nothing humorous into the former
and excluding everything serious from the
latter. It insisted severely upon the austere
dignity of tragedy. It told the dramatist
to avoid all scenes of violence; and it ad-
vised him to use messengers to narrate all
events which might not be exhibited with
propriety. Above all, it laid stress upon the
strict observance of the Three Unities de-
manding that the playwright should have
but one story to set on the stage; that he
should show this single action in one place
6

only ; and that this single action, shown in a
single place, should be begun and completed
, in a single day.

Lope's 'New Art of Making Plays' is not a
familiar epistle like Horace's 'Ars Poetica';
rather is it a familiar discourse having the
playful ease of an afterdinner speech. It con-
sists of a series of paragraphs of irregular
length, varying from four to forty lines each.
It is written in blank verse, hendecasyllabics,
except that the last two lines of every para-
graph are in rime. These terminal couplets
recall the riming exit-speeches common in
contemporary Elizabethan drama; and in
both cases apparently the rimes serve to
heighten the emphasis at the end of the rhe-
torical period. At the conclusion of his ad-
dress, Lope drops into Latin and inserts ten
lines in that tongue ten lines of unidenti-
fied origin. These Latin verses may be his
own composition or they may yet be traced
to some overlooked poem. They are brought
into harmony with the rest of the work by the
ingenious device of riming the last Latin
line with a line in Spanish, thus making a
couplet half in the learned language and
half in the vernacular. These two hybrid
7

lines are immediately followed by the usual
terminal couplet, so that there are only three
lines in Spanish after the ten lines of Latin.
In the translation which follows the Latin
verse has been rendered into English rime
by Professor Edward Delavan Perry.

Professor Rennert in his authoritative bi-
ography of Lope (p. 179) declares that
Lope's address "is written in a bantering
spirit, and a vein of good humor pervades
the whole poem. Lope evidently did not
take the matter very seriously, nor reflect
deeply on what he was about to say. It
probably did not take him much longer to
write the 'New Art of Making Plays' than
it took him to write as many lines of a co-
media. The versification, strangely enough,
lacks Lope's habitual ease and fluency; it is
careless and sometimes halting, while the
sense is not always clear, an additional sign
that this treatise was hastily composed."

Morel-Fatio notes that the 'Arte Nuevo'
was reprinted only three times during Lope's
life-time, at Madrid in 1613 and 1621 and
at Hueva in 1623; and he finds in the poem
itself ample explanation for its lack of pop-
ularity. Lope was the superb leader of an
8

astounding development of the Spanish
drama; and he himself tells us that when he
delivered this address he had already written
nearly five hundred plays. Yet lie utters no
paean of triumph; he blows no bugle-blast
of defiance to the defenders of other stand-
ards than those under which he himself was
fighting; he does not anticipate the ardor
and the fervor which were to animate Victor
Hugo's preface to 'Cromwell'; he does not
stand to his guns and point to what he has
accomplished on the stage as his own justifi-
cation and as a sufficient answer to the cavil-
ing of criticasters. His attitude seems to be
humble and apologetic; he admits the valid-
ity of the Classicist code of rules; and in his
own defence he proffers only what the law-
yers call a plea of confession and avoidance,
declaring that he would have obeyed the be-
hest of the learned theorists if only he had
been permitted by the public. He acknowl-
edges the faultiness of all his dramatic works
and throws the blame on the depravity of
public taste, since

We who live to please, must please to live.

He supports his acceptance of the Classi-
9

cist doctrine with a brave show of erudition
and with mention of Cicero, Donatus, Ro-
bortello, Julius Pollux, Manetti, Plutarch,
Athenaeus, Xenophon, Valerus Maximus,
Pietro Crinito and Vitruvius; and Morel-
Fatio declares that this pedantic parade has
no solid foundation of scholarship, being de-
rived entirely from two writers, Donatus,
the commentator on Terence, and Robortello,
the commentator on Aristotle and on Hor-
ace. In this second-hand echoing of the co-
difiers of critical theory the great Spanish
playwright reveals no independence of inter-
pretation, accepting without question what-
ever he has found in the commentaries and
never asking himself whether the commenta-
tors had any valid reason for the rules they
laid down so authoritatively. In other
words, the 'Arte Nuevo' does not disclose
Lope's possession of any critical curiosity
or of any critical acumen, or even of any real
interest in the discussion of critical theories.
We have no right to expect that those as
richly endowed with the creative faculty as
Lope indisputably was, should also have an
equal share of the critical faculty. The
analysis of the principles of their own special
10

art by the poets and painters and playwrights
who venture into the critical arena is always
interesting but it is rarely philosophic and it
is generally technical. And it is to technic
that Lope devotes the most of his discourse.
He trips lightly down the history of the new
Spanish drama; and then he proceeds to be-
stow practical advice on aspiring young
playwrights. He tells these novices that they
must give the public what it wants, and he'
counsels them as to the best methods of tick-
ling the taste of the uncritical playgoer. He
descends to minute practical details; and, in
short, his suggestions are those of a veteran
of the craft supplying lessons in playwriting
for a correspondence-school.

In so far as Lope lays down any critical
principles at all, these are but the codifica-
tion of his own instinctive practise. His
address is like "the speech of a carpenter
standing on the peak of a building he has
just erected" to borrow Richter's sarcastic
phrase. Lope had himself succeeded as a
practical playwright; and his plays had cer-
tain characteristics and were put together
in a certain fashion. As these plays had
pleased the public, beginners would do well
1 1

to consider these characteristics and to fol-
low this fashion. He utters his shrewd rec-
ommendations most unpretentiously, with no
hint of arrogance and with a friendly genial-
ity of tone. Behind his modest precepts stand
his own plays in which his ideal is more
sharply made manifest. Lope's ideal is that
of all his contemporaries, including Calderon
(who followed in his footsteps and often
borrowed his plots). It is that the stage
is intended primarily for story-telling, for
presenting in action a serial tale which shall
excite the constant interest of curiosity.

He bids the beginner to put together his
story with the utmost care, laying the foun-
dations in the first act, contriving unexpected
complications for the second and concealing
the solution of the action until the very last
moment possible, as otherwise the specta-
tors may get up and go out, when once they
can foresee the end. He lays all his stress
upon adroitness and ingenuity of plot-build-
ing; and such casual remarks as he makes
upon character-delineation seem perfunctory.
In thus emphasizing the primary importance
of the action Lope is only echoing Aristotle,
altho he probably was not aware of this.
12

And the practise of the Spanish playwrights
under the lead of Lope was closely akin to
that of their contemporaries, the English
playwrights under the lead of Kyd, and again
later under the lead of Beaumont and
Fletcher. Like Lope, Kyd in his way and
Beaumont and Fletcher in theirs, were story-
tellers on the stage. Poets they were all of /
them, but as playwrights they depended on
plot, on suspense and especially on surprize
often achieved only by contradiction of
character.

The abiding interest of the 'Arte Nuevo'
is two-fold. It resides partly in the sugges-
tiveness of the elementary lessons in the art
of playmaking, which Lope here proffers to
apprentices in the art and which are invalu-
able as an aid for proper appreciating the
methods of the Spanish playwrights of the
Age of Gold. It resides partly in the cu-
riously deprecating attitude taken by Lope
toward his own works, altho he was ap-
proaching the pinnacle of his fame when he
penned this didactic poem. Is the great
Spanish playwright sincere in his humility
before the code of the Classicists? Is his
self-abasement genuine or is it ironic?
13

Morel-Fatio follows Menendez y Pelayo in
accepting it at its face value. Guillaume
Huszar, in his useful book on Corneille and
the Spanish theater, thinks that when Lope
pretends to disparage his own plays he is not
to be taken seriously. I confess that I
should like to agree with this latter view; and
there is some little internal evidence in sup-
port of it. But the balance is rather in favor
of the former opinion. Yet however hon-
est may be Lope's willingness to do penance
to the Classicist code which he admits to
have outraged, his is a proud humility after
all. He is not really as abased and as plain-
tive as some of his critics have asserted.
Modest as he may be, he takes care to make
his own position plain. For all his easy
attitude and his tolerant geniality, for all his
lightness of touch on the one side and his
pedantic citation on the other, he does not
fail to ihsist on his authorship of nearly half
a thousand plays and to remind his auditors
N that he has continuously succeeded in pleas-
, ing the public, even tho he had to violate the
v rules in order to win this success.

Lope assumes a detached attitude and his
tone is bantering, as Professor Rennert has
4

suggested. He does not here display the
intense personal interest in the analysis of his
own work which glows and burns thru all
Corneille's 'Examens,' in spite of the French
dramatic poet's occasional confession of a
lapse from the strict letter of the law. Lope
has none of the prophetic fire of Hugo's fa-
mous preface in anticipatory defence of the
plays he was going to write. In fact, it is
difficult to deny that this poem is a pretty
careless piece of work, tossed off in an idle
hour, evoked by a special occasion when it
behooved the speaker to assume a self-de-
precatory attitude. But it is not the "la-
mentable palinode" that Menendez y Pelayo
called it; nor is it exactly what Mr. Ormsby
termed it (in the Quarterly Review for Jan-
uary, 1894) "virtually the manifesto of a
triumphant dictator, a dramatic Napoleon
who, while professing the profoundest re-
spect for the sovereign will of the public,
scarcely cared to hide his contempt for its
intelligence or its taste, which foreign critics,
he says, justly called barbarous; or to dis-
guise the fact that he owed his power to his
knowledge and adroit manipulation of its
weaknesses." That scholars so well equipt
'5

for the consideration of Spanish literature
and so well fitted for the interpretation of
the Spanish character as Ormsby and Ren-
nert, Morel-Fatio and Menendez y Pelayo
can take views as conflicting as those severally
expressed by them, this is proof positive
tl.at Lope has not taken the pains neces-
sary to make his position clear.

While Lope was willing at least to render
lip-service to the code of the Classicists, one
of his followers in the theater, Tirso de Mo-
lina, (best known as the author of the earli-
est dramatization of the Don Juan legend) in
his 'Cigarrales de Toledo,' published in
1624, fifteen years after Lope's address, is
bold in denying the validity of any rule lim-
iting the duration of time or forbidding a
change of scene, (See Breitinger's 'Unites
d' Aristote' pp. 29 seq. ) But Cervantes in the
first part of 'Don Quixote,' published in
1605, four years before the delivery of the
'Arte Nuevo,' had revealed a plentiful lack
of sympathy for the so-called Aristotelian
rules. There is no disputing the irony in
his portrait of the Canon of Toledo who de-
manded the appointment of "some intelligent
and sensible person at the capital to examine
16

all plays before they were acted, not only
those produced in the capital itself, but all
that were intended to be acted in Spain;
without whose approval, seal and signature,
no local magistracy should allow any play to
be acted." (Ormsby's translation, ii, 387,
chapter xlviii). Earlier remarks of the
Canon show us that he was familiar with
whole Classicist code; indeed, Ormsby (in a
foot-note to his translation of this chapter)
calls attenion to the substantial identity of the
Canon's opinions with those expressed by Sir
Philip Sidney in the 'Apology for Poesy.' In
another work of fiction written more than
two centuries later, in the 'Nicholas Nickel-
by' of Dickens, we are introduced to a Mr.
Murdle whose knowledge is obviously
vaguer than the Canon's but who is quite as
strenuous in his insistence upon "the preser-
vation of the unities."

Into the vext question of the personal rela-
tions of Cervantes and of Lope, it is not
needful to enter here. It would be pleasant
to believe that each really appreciated the
genius of the other; but however pleasant
this is not quite possible. Cervantes seems
not to have suspected the greatness of

his own masterpiece; and it is plain that he
had a special fondness for his plays, which
had not succeeded. Lope must have been
conscious of his own position at the head of
all Spanish poets ; he might assume a humble
attitude when he was the author of less than
five hundred plays but by the time that he
had more than a thousand pieces to his credit
the garment of humility is no longer becom-
ing. Martinenche in his 'Comedia Espa-
gnole' (pp. 113-4) follows Morel-Fatio in
pointing out Lope's later satisfaction with
what he had accomplished, even to the extent
1 of claiming for himself the invention of the
new type of play which had established itself
on the Spanish stage.

When we consider the extraordinary
vogue of Lope as a playwright in the Golden
Age of Spanish literature and the swift dif-
fusion of his fame thruout Europe, when we
recall his unparalleled productivity, and
when we remember his supreme importance

I as a representative of a superb development
of the modern drama, we cannot fail to be
surprised to discover that no adequate at-
tempt has ever been made to present him to
the English reading public. In French there
18

are two translations of selections from his
dramatic works; and there are also varied
renderings into German. But in English
there is little or nothing. Lord Holland in
1787 analized the 'Star of Seville' and
turned the more striking episodes into Eng-
lish; and it was on this summary and on
these fragments that Mrs. Kemble founded
her five act 'Star of Seville' published in
1837. Holcroft had utilized Lope's 'Padre
Engafiado' in the plot of his 'Father Outwit-
ted,' published in 1805. A perversion of
Lope's play on the 'Romeo and Juliet' story
had been issued in English in 1770; and this
moved F. W. Cosens to print (for private
distribution) in 1869 a careful translation of
'Castelvines y Montreses'. In the sixth
volume of 'The Drama,' edited by Alfred
Bates and published in 1903, there is a trans-
lation of the 'Perro del Hortelano,' (the
'Gardener's Dog') by W. H. H. Chambers.
These scattered versions and perversions ap-
parently represent all of Lope's dramatic
work which has found its way into our lan-
guage. It is greatly to be desired that at
least one volume might be issued in English
to contain the 'Star of Seville,' the 'Gard-
19

ener's Dog,' the 'Romeo and Juliet,' and the
'Duchess of Malfi' plays, and also the 'Phy-
sician of his own Honor,' and the 'Alcalde
of Zalamea,' of which Calderon's rehand-
lings are already accessible in Fitzgerald's
free rendering.

A few scattered passages from the 'Arte
Nuevo' were turned into English couplets by
Lord Holland; and some of those were bor-
rowed (without credit) in G. H. Lewes's
stimulating study of the Spanish Drama, is-
sued in 1846. An inadequate and incom-
plete version, derived mainly from the
French translation of Dumas-Hinard, was
included in an essay on Lope published in the
Catholic World for September, 1878. There
is a careful abstract in Professor Rennert's
standard biography of Lope (1904). But
Professor Brewster's translation is the first
attempt to render into English the whole of
Lope's advice to the aspiring playwrights of
his own time and country.

BRANDER MATTHEWS.
(June 1914.)

THE NEW ART OF MAKING PLAYS
IN THIS AGE

THE NEW ART OF MAKING PLAYS
IN THIS AGE

Addressed to the Academy at Madrid.

1. You command me, noble spirits, flow-
er of Spain, who in this congress and re-
nowned academy will in short space of time
surpass not only the assemblies of Italy
which Cicero, envious of Greece, made fa-
mous with his own name, hard by the Lake
of Avernus, but also Athens where in the
Lyceum of Plato was seen high conclave of
philosophers, to write you an art of the
play which is today acceptable to the taste of
the crowd.

2. Easy seems this subject, and easy it
would be for anyone of you who had written
very few comedies, and who knows more

out the art of writing them and of all these
things; for what condemns me in this task
* .Jis that I have written them without art.

3. Not because I was ignorant of the pre-
cepts; thank God, even while I was a tyro in
grammar, I went through the books which

2 3

treated the subject, before I had seen the sun
run its course ten times from the Ram to the
Fishe^;

4. i But because, in fine,! found that com-
edies were not at that time, in Spain, as their j
first devisers in the world thought that they!
should be written; but rather as many ru
fellows managed them, who confirmed the 1
crowd in its own crudeness I and so they were
introduced in such wise that he who now
writes them artistically dies without fame I
and guerdon; for custom can do more
among those who lack light of art than rea-

Tn and force.
5. True it is that I have sometimes writ-
ten in accordance with the art which few
know; but, no sooner do I see coming from
some other source the monstrosities full of
painted scenes where the crowd congregates
and the women who canonize this sad busi-
ness, than I return to that same barbarous
habit J and when I have to write a comedy I
lock in the precepts with six keys, I banish
Terence and Plautus from my study that they
may not cry out at me; for truth, even in
dumb books, is wont to call aloud; I and I
write in accordance with that art whicn they

devised who aspired to the applause of the
crowd; for, since the crowd pays for the
comedies, it is fitting to talk foolishly to it to
satisfy its taste.

6. Yet true comedy has its end estab-
lished like every kind of poem or poetic art, *
and that has always been to imitate the ac- 1

/tions of men and to paint the customs of their
age. Furthermore, all poetic imitation what-
soever is composed of three things, which
are discourse, agreeable verse, harmony, that
is to say music, which so far was common
also to tragedy; comedy being different from
tragedy in that it treats of lowly and plebeian
actions, and tragedy of royal and great ones.
LooTc whether there be in our comedies few
failings,..-

7. /^tt/ojwas the name given to them, for
they imitate the actions and the doings of
the crowd. Lope de Rueda was an example
in Spain of these principles, and today are
to be seen in print prose comedies of his so
lowly that he introduces into them the doings
of mechanics and the love of the daughter
of a smith; whence there has remained the

* custom of calling the old comedies entre-
meses, where the art persists in all its force,

there being one action and that between ple-
beian people ; for an entr ernes with a king has
never been seen. And thus it is shown how
the art, for very lowness of style, came to be
held in great disrepute, and the king in the
comedy to be introduced for the ignorant.

8. Aristotle depicts in his 'Poetics', al-
tho obscurely, the beginning of comedy;
the strife between Athens and Megara as to
which of them was the first inventor; they
of Megara say that it was Epicarmus,
while Athens would have it that Mag-
netes was the man. Elias Donatus says
it had its origin in ancient sacrifices. He
names Thespis as the author of tragedy,
following Horace, who affirms the same, as
of comedies, Aristophanes. Homer com-
posed the 'Odyssey' in imitation of comedy,
but the 'Iliad' was a famous example of trag-
edy, in imitation of which I called my 'Jer-
usalem' an epic, and added the term tragic;
and in the same manner all people commonly
term the 'Inferno,' the 'Purgatorio,' and the
'Paradise' of the celebrated poet Dante Ali-
ghieri a comedy, and this Manetti recognizes
in his prolog.

9. Now everybody knows that comedy,

26

as if under suspicion, was silenced for a cer-
tain time, and that hence also satire was
born, which, being more cruel, more quickly
came to an end, and gave place to the New
Comedy. The choruses were the first things ;
then the fixt number of the characters was
introduced; but Menander, whom Terence
followed, held the choruses in despite, as
offensive. Terence was more circumspect as
to the principles; since he never elevated the
style of comedy to the greatness of tragedy,
which many have condemned as vicious in
Plautus; for in this respect Terence was
more wary.

i o/" Tragedy has as its argument history,
and comedy fiction; for this reason it was
called flat-footed, of humble argument, since
the actor performed without buskin or stage.
There were comedies with the pallium,
mimes, comedies with the toga, fabulae atel-
lanae, and comedies of the tavern, which
were also, as now, of various sorts.

11. With Attic elegance the men of
Athens chided vice and evil custom in their
comedies, and they gave their prizes both to
the writers of verse and to the devisers of
action. For this Tully called comedies "the
27

>\"

mirror of custom and a living image of the
truth," a very high tribute, in that comedy
ran even with history. Look whether it be
worthy of this crown and glory !

12. But now I perceive that you are
saying that this is merely translating books
and wearying you with painting this mixed-
up affair. Believe me there has been a rea-
son why you should be reminded of some of
these things; for you see that you ask me
to describe the art of writing plays in Spain,
where whatever is written is in defiance of
art; and to tell how they are now written
contrary to the ancient rule and to what is
founded on reason, is to ask me to draw on
my experience, not on art, for art speaks
truth which the ignorant crowd gainsays.

13. If then, you desire art, I beseech
you, men of genius, to read the very learned
Robortello of Udine and you will see in what
he says concerning Aristotle and especially
in what he writes about comedy, as much as
is scattered among many books; for every-
thing of today is in a state of confusion.

14. If you wish to have my opinion of
the comedies which now have the upper hand
and to know why it is necessary that the

s8

crowd with its laws should maintain the^vile_
chimera of this comic monster, I will tell you
what I hold, and do you pardon me, since I
must obey whoever has power to command
me, that, gilding the error of the crowd, I
desire to tell you of what sort I would have
them; for there is no recourse but to follow
art observing a mean between the two ex-
tremes.

15. "Let the subject be chosen and do not
be amused, may you excuse these precepts !
if it happens to deal with kings; tho,
for that matter, I understand that Philip
the Prudent, King of Spain and our lord,
was offended at seeing a king in them ; either
because the matter was hostile to art or be-
cause the royal authority ought not to be
represented among the lowly and the vulgar.

1 6. This is merely turning back to the
Old Comedy, where we see that Plautus in-
troduced gods, as in his 'Amphitryon' he rep-
resents Jupiter. God knows that I have dif-
ficulty in giving this my approbation, since
Plutarch, speaking of Menander, does not
highly esteem Old Comedy. But since we
are so far away from art and in Spain do it
29

a thousand wrongs, let the learned this once

close their lips.

/ r

17.^ Tragedy mixed with comedy and
Terence with Seneca, tho it be like another
minotaur of Pasiphae, will render one part
grave, the other ridiculous; f^r this variety
causes much delight. Nature gives us good
example, for through such variety it is beau-
tiful.

1 8. Bear in mind that this subject should
contain one action only, seeing to it that the
story in no manner be episodic; I mean the
introduction of other things which are beside
the main purpose; nor that any member be
omitted which might ruin the whole of the
context. There is no use in advising that it
should take place in the period of one sun,
tho this is the view of Aristotle ; but we lose
our respect for him when we mingle tragic
style with the humbleness of mean comedy.
Let it take place in as little time as possible,
except when the poet is writing history in
which some years have to pass; these he
can relegate to the space between the acts,
wherein, if necessary, he can have a character
go on some journey; a thing that greatly of-
30

fends whoever perceives it. But let not him
who is offended go to see them.

19. Oh ! how lost in admiration are many
at this very time at seeing that years are
passed in an affair to which an artificial day
sets a limit; tho for this they would not
allow the mathematical day I But, consider-
ing that the wrath of a seated Spaniard is
immoderate, when in two hours there is not
presented to him everything from Genesis to
the Last Judgment, I deem it most fitting, if it
be for us here to please him, for us to adjust
everything so that it succeeds.

20. vThe subject once chosen, write in \\
prose, and divide the matter into three acts

of time, seeing to it, if possible, that in each
one the space of the day be not broken. Cap-
tain Virues, a worthy wit, divided comedy
into three acts, which before had gone on all
fours, as on baby's feet, for comedies were
then infants. I wrote them myself, when
eleven or twelve years of age, of four acts
and of four sheets of paper, for a sheet con-
tained each act; and then it was the fashion
that for the three intermissions were made
three little entremeses, but today scarce one,,
and then a dance, for the dancing is so*
3

important in comedy that Aristotle ap-
proves of it, and Athenaeus, Plato, and
Xenophon treat of it, though this last disap-
proves of indecorous dancing; and for this
reason he is vexed at Callipides, wherein he
pretends to ape the ancient chorus. The
matter divided into two parts, see to the con-
nection from the beginning until the action
runs down; but do not permit the untying of
the plot until reaching the last scene ; for the
crowd, knowing what the end is, will turn its
face to the door and its shoulder to what it
has awaited three hours face to face; for in
what appears nothing more is to be known.
2i.-\ Very seldom should the stage remain
without someone speaking, because the crowd
becomes restless in these intervals and the
story spins itself out at great length; for,
besides its being a great defect, the avoidance

of it increases grace and artifice. X''

vO IB

22. i Begin then, and, with simple lan-
guage, ilo not spend sententious thoughts and
witty sayings on family trifles, which is all
that the familiar talk of two or three people
is representing. But when the character who
is introduced persuades, counsels or dis-
suades, then there should be gravity and wit;
32

tai

'' mi

for then doubtless is truth observed, since
a man speaks in a different style from what
is common when he gives counsel, or per-
suades, or argues against anything. Aristides,
the rhetorician, gave us warrant for this ; for
he wishes the language of comedy to be pure,
clear, and flexible, and he adds also that it
should be taken from the usage of the peo-
ple, this being different from that of polite
society; for in the latter case the diction will
be elegant, sonorous, and adorned. Do not
drag in quotations, nor let your language of-
fend because of exquisite words; for, if one
is to imitate those who speak, it should not
be by the language of Panchaia, of the
Metaurus, v pf hippogriffs, demi-gods and cen-

irs. i

23. | If the king should speak, imitate as
much as possible the gravity of a king; if
the sage speak, observe a sententious mod-
esty; describe lovers with those passions
which greatly move whoever listens to themjj
manage soliloquies in such a manner that the
recitant is quite transformed, and in chang-
ing himself, changes the listenef^tLet him
ask questions and reply to himself, and if
he shall make plaints, let him observe the re-
33

spect due to women. T,et not ladies disre-
gard their character, and if they change cos-
tumes, let it be in such wise that it may be
excused; for male disguise usually is very
pleasing. Let him be on his guard against
impossible things, for it is of the chiefest
importance that only the likeness of truth
should be represented. The lackey should
not discourse of lofty affairs, nor express the
conceits which we have seen in certain foreign
plays; and in no wise let the charter con-
tradict himself in what he has said^I mean
to say, forget, as in Sophocles one blames
Oedipus for not remembering that he v has
killed Laius with his own h;iml. .,. Let the
scenes end with epigram, with wit, and with
elegant verse, in such wise that, at his exit, he
\ who spouts leave not the audience disgusted.
* In the first act set forth the case. In the
y second weave together the events, in such
o> wise tKat until the middle of the third act
one may hardly guess the outcome. Always
trick expectancy; and hence it may come to
pass that something quite far from what is
promised may be left to the understanding.
Tactfully suit x your verse to the subjects be-
ing treated. " Dccimas are good for com-

34

\

plainings; the sonnet is good for those who
are waiting in expectation; recitals of events
ask for romances, though they shine bril- ' p
liantly in octavas. Tercets are for grave
affairs and redondillas for affairs of love.
jl JLet rhetorical figures be brought in, as repe-
tition or anadiplosis, and in the beginning
of these same verses the various forms of
anaphora; and also irony, questions, apos-
trophes, and exclamations.

24. To deceive the audience with the
truth is a thing that has seemed well, as
Miguel Sanchez, worthy of this memorial for
the invention, was wont to do in all his com-
edies. Equivoke and the uncertainty arising
from ambiguity have always held a large
place among the crowd, for it thinks that it
alone understands what the other one is say-
ing. Better still are the subjects in which
honor has a part, since they deeply stir every-
body; along with them go ^ifitwous deeds, for
virtue is everywhere loved; 'hence we see, if
an actor chance to represent a traitor, he is so
hateful to everyone that what he wishes to
buy is not sold him, and the crowd flees when
it meets him; but if he is loyal, they lend
to him and invite him, and even the chief
35

men honor him, love him, seek him out, en-
tertain him, and acclaim him.

25. Let each act have but four sheets,
for twelve are well suited to the time and
the patience of him who is listening. In
satirical parts, be not clear or open, since it
is known that for this very reason comedies

,. were forbidden by law in Greece and Italy ;

1 wound without hate, for if, perchance, slan-
der be done, expect not applause, nor aspire
to fame.

26. These things you may regard as
aphorisms which you get not from the ancient
art, which the present occasion allows no fur-
ther space for treating; since whatever has
to do with the three kinds of stage properties
which Vitruvius speaks of concerns the im-
presario; just as Valerius Maximus, Petrus
Crinitus, Horace in his epistles, and others
describe these properties, with their drops,
trees, cabins, houses, and simulated marbles.

27. Of costume Julius Pollux would tell
us if it were necessary, for in Spain it is the
case that the comedy of today is replete with
barbarous things: a Turk wearing the neck-
gear of a Christian and a Roman in tight
breeches.

36

28. But of all, nojjpdy can I call more
barbarous than myselfjsince in defiance of
art I dare to lay down precepts, and I allow
myself to be borne along in the vulgar cur-
rent, wherefore Italy and France call me
ignorant. But what can I do if I have writ-
ten four hundred and eighty-three comedies,
along with one which I have finished this
week? For all of these, except six, gravely
sin against art. Yet, in fine, I defend what I
have written, and I know that, tho they
might have been better in another manner,
they would not have had the vogue which
they have had; for sometimes that which is
contrary to what is just, for that very reason,
pleases the taste.

How Comedy reflects this life of man,

How true her portraiture of young and old;
How subtle wit, polished in narrow span,

And purest speech, and more too you behold;
What grave consideration mixed with smiles,

What seriousness, along with pleasant jest;
Deceit of slaves; how woman oft beguiles

How full of slyness is her treacherous breast;
How silly, awkward swains to sadness run,

How rare success, though all seems well begun,

37

Let one hear with attention, and dispute
not of the art; for in comedy everything will
be found of such a sort that in listening to it
everything becomes evident.

(Translated by William T. Brewster.)

NOTES

NOTES

i. The opening passage of Lope's poem
is thus rendered into English verse by Lord
Holland:

Bright flow'rs of Spain, whose young academy

Ere long shall that by Tully nam'd outvie;

And match'd the Athenian porch where Plato

taught,

Whose sacred shades such throngs of sages sought,
You bid me tell the art of writing plays
Such as the crowd might please, and you might

praise,

The work seems easy easy it might be
To you who write not much, but not to me.
For how should I the rules of art explain,
I, whom nor art nor rule should e'er restrain?
Not but I studied all the antient rules:
Yes, God be praised, long since in grammar schools,
Scarce ten years old, with all the patience due,
The books that subject treat I waded through:
My case was simple, in these latter days,
The truant authors of our Spanish plays
So wide had wander'd from the narrow road
Which the strict fathers of the drama trod,
I found the stage with barbarous pieces stor'd:
The critics censur'd ; but the crowd ador'd.
Nay more ; these sad corrupters of the stage
So blended taste, and so debauch'd the age,
Who writes by rule must please himself alone,
Be daimn'd without remorse, and die unknown.

41

Such force has habit for the untaught fools,

Trusting their own, despise the antient rules,

Yet, true it is, I too have written plays,

The wiser few, who judge with skill, might praise :

But when I see how shew and nonsense, draws

The crowd's, and, more than all, the fair's applause,

Who still are forward with indulgent rage

To sanction every monster of the stage.

I, doom'd to write, the public taste to hit,

Resume the barbarous dress 'twas vain to quit;

I lock up every rule before I write,

Plautus and Terence drive from out my sight,

Lest rage should teach these injur'd wits to join,

And their dumb books cry shame on works like

mine.

To vulgar standards then I square my play,
Writing at ease; for, since the public pay,
'Tis just, methinks, I by their compass steer,
And write the nonsense that they love to hear.

The two lines in which Lope declares that
he locks up Plautus and Terence with six keys
were quoted by Victor Hugo in the procla-
mation of his theories of dramatic art pre-
fixt to his unactable 'Cromwell' (1827). But
Souriau in his annotated edition of the 'Pre
face de Cromwell' thinks it possible that
Hugo may have borrowed the quotation
second-hand from a pamphlet by Scudery, 'La
Preuve des Passages' put forth during the
quarrel over Corneille's 'Cid.' It is amusing
to note that M. Emile Faguet, quoting these
lines in his 'Drame Ancien, Drame Moderne'
4*

(p. 122) inadvertently credits them to Cer-
vantes.

Fitzgerald, in the preface to his transla-
tions from Calderon, asserts that certain of
the defects discoverable in these pieces do
not represent "Calderon's own better self,
but concession to private haste or public taste
by one who so often relied upon some strik-
ing dramatic crisis for success with a not very
accurate audience." It may be objected that
this plea is dangerous in that it is based on
the unwarrantable assumption that Calde-
ron's private taste was different from that of
the public to which he appealed; but it can
be urged in behalf of Lope as potently as in
behalf of Calderon. Lope's own plea that
he must give the public what it wants is more
effectively put by Moliere, in the preface to
the 'Precieuses Ridicules' ; "I should needless-
ly offend all Paris, if I accused it of having
applauded a piece of stupidity; as the public
is the absolute judge of works of this sort,
it would be impertinent in me to contradict
it; and even if I had the worst possible opin-
ion of my 'Precieuses' before the perform-
ance, I ought now to believe that it has some
value, since so many persons together have
spoken well of it."

6. Morel-Fatio points out that this para-
graph is practically a literal translation from
Robortello's 'Paraphrases in libram Horatii
43

De Comedia.' It is mainly from Robortello
that Lope derives all his parade of erudition.

8. In this paragraph, as Morel-Fatio in-
forms us, Lope is again relying on Robortello
and also on Donatus.

9. At the end of this paragraph Lope,
following Donatus blindly, attributes to Te-
rence the loftiness of style to which Plautus
occasionally attained. As Damas-Hinard
noted in his French translation of certain
of Lope's plays, the Spanish poet is here
sinning against light, since he had a first-hand
knowledge of the comedies of both the .Latin
dramatists.

15. Professor Rennert (p. 180) points
out that this distinction between tragedy and
comedy is arbitrary and un-Aristotelian, altho
it was "the one that obtained thruout the
Renascence and down to the end of the period
of Classicism." It was the doctrine of
Robortello and of the later Italian theorists
that it was "the rank of the characters, and
this only, which distinguished a tragedy from
a comedy." This is the distinction which
Sir Philip Sidney maintains in his 'Defence
of Poesy.'

Here is Lord Holland's metrical version
of the concluding lines of this passage :

Once to behold a monarch on the stage,
England, 'tis said, our prudent Philip's rage;
Or that he deem'd such characters unfit

44

For lively sallies and for comic wit;

Or crowns debas'd, if actors were allow'd

To bring the state of kings before a low-born crowd.

In his 'Hamburg Dramaturgy,' (p. 394-5
of the English version in Bohn's series)
Lessing translates a score of these lines, end-
ing with Lope's assertion that nature has set
us the example of commingling the ludicrous
with the serious; and then he asks : "Is it true
that nature sets us an example of the common
and the sublime, the farcical and the serious,
the merry and the sad? It seems so. But
if this is true, Lope has done more than he
intended; he has not only glossed over the
faults of his stage, he has really proved that
these are no faults, for nothing can be a
fault that is an imitation of nature." But
Mezieres in the introduction he prefixt to the
French translation of Lessing's dramatic
criticism quotes a passage from Diderot on
the danger of uniting tragedy and burlesque :
"Tragicomedy is never be more than a bad
species, because in it are confounded two
disparate species, separated by a natural bar-
rier." Here Lessing, who had derived so
much from Diderot, reveals himself as in
advance and on firmer ground than his
French contemporary. It is amusing to note
that Diderot, so often hailed as a forerunner
of the Romanticists, is here a belated echo
of so strict a classicist as Sir Philip Sidney
45

who asserted that the plays he saw on the
English stage were "neither right tragedies,
nor right comedies, mingling Kings and
Clowns, not because the matter so carrieth it,
but thrust in Clowns by head and shoulders,
to play a part in magestical matters, with
neither decency nor discretion: So as neither
the admiration and commiseration, nor the
right sportfulness is by their mongrel Tra-
gicomedy attained."

1 6. Morel-Fatio notes that this passage
also is derived directly from Robortello.

17. These lines Lord Holland turns into
English couplets:

The tragic with the comic muse combin'd,
Grave Seneca with sprightly Terence join'd,
May seem, I grant, Pasiphae's monstrous birth,
Where one half moves our sorrow, one our mirth.
But sweet variety must still delight,
And, spite of rules, dame Nature says we're right,
Thru' all her works she this example gives,
And from variety her charms derives.

With this statement of Lope's may be
compared the theory set forth by Victor
Hugo in the preface to 'Cromwell.'

19. Here once more, as Morel-Fatio has
shown, Lope is leaning upon Robortello.
Three and a half lines of this passage Lord
Holland translates freely in this triplet:

Who seated once, disdain to go away,
46

Unless in two short hours they see the play
Brought down from Genesis to judgment day.

This popular liking for the whole story
without selection or omission is a survival
from the middle ages when the mystery play
began with Genesis and ended, if not with
judgment day, at least with the casting of the
wicked into Hell-Mouth. To the Classicists
this prolongation of the action was always
most offensive. Lord Holland turned into
English the four lines in which Boileau de-
nounces the custom :

The Spanish bard, who no nice censure fears,
In one short day includes a lapse of years.
In those rude acts the hero fives so fast,
Child in the first, he's greybeard in the last.

And Sir Philip Sidney had earlier ex-
pressed his disgust for this license, blaming
the English playwrights for their liberal al-
lowance of time, "for ordinary it is that two
young Princes fall in love. After many tra-
verses, she is got with child, delivered of a
fair boy; he is lost, groweth up a man, falls
in love, and is ready to get another child;
and all this in two hours' space: which how
absurd it is in sense even sense may imagine,
and Art hath taught, and all ancient exam-
ples justified." With this may be compared
Corneille's opinions in his 'Discourse on the
47

Three Unities' and in his discussion of his
own 'Melite.'

Lope's limitation of the duration of per-
formance is exactly equivalent to Shakspere's
"two hours traffic of the stage." But Shack,
and after him Morel-Fatio, adduce evidence
that the customary stay of the spectators in
the Spanish theaters was two hours and a
/half.

20. Lope's advice, that a play should
first be written in prose to be turned later into
verse, Menendez y Pelayo believes to be bor-
rowed from a passage in Vida's Latin poem
on the poetic art, a passage thus rendered
in English in Pitt's translation:

At first without the least restraint compose
And mold the future poem with prose,
A full and proper series to maintain
And draw the just connection in a chain.
By stated bounds your progress to control,
To join the parts and regulate the whole.

Morel-Fatio thinks this very likely, since
Lope was familiar with Vida's work. Oddly
enough, the principle Lope here lays down
was not in accord with his own practise, since
the state of the existing manuscripts seems
to show that he composed originally in verse,
altho on occasion he drew up a preliminary
scenario in prose. It may be noted that the
method here recommended by Lope was that
actually adopted by Moliere, who (in his

48

haste to meet the wishes of Louis XIV) had
to call on Corneille to versify more than half
of the 'Psyche' which he had completely con-
structed in prose and which he had not been
able wholly to turn into verse within the
limits of time set by the king.

Lord Holland thus renders certain lines
of this paragraph into English couplets:

Plays of three acts we owe to Virues' pen,

Which ne'er had crawled but on all fours till then;

An action suited to that helpless age,

The infancy of wit, the childhood of the stage.

Such plays not twelve years old did I complete,

Four sheets to every play, an act on every sheet.

And Ticknor also employs the rimed coup-
let for his translation of a longer passage :

The Captain Verues, a famous wit,
Cast dramas in three acts, by happy hit;
For, till his time, upon all fours they crept,
Like helpless babes that never yet had stept.
Such plays I wrote, eleven and twelve years old;
Four acts each measured to a sheet's just fold
Filled out four sheets; while still, between,
Three entremeses short filled up the scene.

But Camille de Senne and Guillot de Saxe
in the preface of their study of the 'Star of
Seville' (Paris, 1913, p. 44, note) assert that
the three-act form had established itself in
the Spanish theater half a century anterior
to Verues. And Lessing in his 'Hamburg
Dramaturgy' (Dec. 4th, 1767) had pointed
49

out the discrepancy between Lope's assigning
the credit of this change to Verues and Cal-
deron's claim, (in the preface to his come-
dies), that he was the first to make this re-
duction.

If Lope had been familiar with Aristotle
he might have justified the three-act form as
simply the carrying out the Greek critic's
principle that a play must have an action
with a beginning, a middle and an end.

As Attic tragedies were acted without any
intermission they had only a single prolonged
act, altho a trilogy was a story shown in
three acts. Yet the traditional five-act form
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
is indirectly derived from the Athenian
drama, wherein the number of choral pas-
sages came in time to be limited to four,
separating five passages in dialog, which
when the lyric interludes were omitted, stood
forth as five separate acts. Horace, prob-
ably following the precepts of the Alexan-
drian critics, prescribes five acts (see Weil's
'Etudes sur le Drame Antique,' p. 325).
The MSS. of Latin comedy show no divi-
sion into acts (see Fairclough's edition of
Terence's 'Andria,' pp. lii, liii,). It may be
noted that as soon as the five-act form was
disestablished the tendency of the leading
modern dramatists has been to adopt the
logical three-act form. Most of Ibsen's so-
5

cial dramas are in three acts, just as Lope's
are.

Commenting on Lope's strange prescrip-
tion of the number of pages a comedy should
have, Professor Rennert (p. 163, note) tells
us that "this rule, as to the length of the
comedia, which Lope here lays down, was
carefully followed by all the other dramat-
ists of the time, and deviations from it are
rare. Four sheets sixteen leaves for each
act, that is forty-eight leaves to a comedia.
An examination of Lope's autograph plays
shows how strictly he adhered to this rule.
Where slight variations are found they are
due to the difference in the size of the leaves
the comedia always consisting of about
three thousand lines. . . . On the other
hand, the comedies of Miguel Sanchez, a
predecessor of Lope, contain about four
thousand lines."

Lope, like his fellow dramatists Calderon
and Corneille, Moliere, Voltaire and Gol-
doni, had been a pupil of the Jesuits; and it
was doubtless when he was a youthful stu-
dent of the Jesuit school in Madrid that he
became acquainted with the critical theories
of the Italian commentators of Horace and
Aristotle.

21. The rule forbidding the dramatist
ever to leave the stage empty Morel-Fatio
traces to a passage in Donatus dealing with

the omission of the chorus from the New
Comedy of the Greeks. Altho Corneille
does not expressly discuss this rule, he obeyed
it; and it was generally obeyed by all the
French dramatists who accepted the Classi-
cist theory, possibly because the leaving of
the stage empty became the conventional sig-
nal of the end of the act. Even today at the
Theatre Frangais, the curtain does not al-
ways fall on the termination of an act; the
stage is left unoccupied for a moment and
then the three raps of the wooden hammer
are heard, whereupon the characters enter
who are to begin the next act. On the English-
speaking stage this rule has never established
itself; and our dramatic poets have now and
again achieved an effect of expectancy by
leaving the stage bare and letting the spec-
tators wonder who is next to appear.

23. A part of this paragraph is turned
into English couplets by Lord Holland:

In ten line staves should wailing grief be shown;
The sonnet suits a man who speaks alone;
Let plain narration flow in ballad lines;
Though much a tale in copious octaves shines;
Grand weighty thoughts the triplet should contain
But redondillas suit the lover's strain.

In the introduction to his 'Select Plays of
Calderon' Norman Maccoll gives a clear ex-
planation of the various sorts of verse that
Lope mentions here: Romances are "octo-
52

syllabic trochaics the customary measure of
the Spanish ballads. As in the ballads,
these trochaics are sometimes rimed and
sometimes assonant. Redondillas are ar-
ranged in strophes of four lines each. Strong
endings and weak endings are both employed.
The first and fourth lines rime together, and
so do the second and third. This is the sim-
plest of the riming measures in common use.

Quintillas are arranged in strophes
of five lines each. The only rule observed
in the riming is that the same rime must not
occur in more than two successive lines.

The Decima is a combination of
two quintillas in one strophe of ten lines.
The arrangement of rimes is as follows : the
first five are disposed . . . a, b, b, a, a,
and the second five are arranged c, c, d, d, jel
. Three other forms of iambic verse
are borrowed from the Italians, the Terceto
(the terza rima of the Italians), the Octava
(or ottava rima} and the Sonnet." Maccoll
in his turn renders several of Lope's lines
into English rimes:

In decimas finds voice the mourner's wail ;
The sonnet's fitted for the action's stay;
Romances serve to tell the player's tale.
Yet octaves well can stirring news convey;
While deed of high import in terzas shines,
And redondillas are the lover's lines.

The incessant employment of these var-
53

ious lyric measures is evidence, were any
needed, of the prevailing lyrical quality of
the dialog of the Spanish drama when Lope
and Calderon were its chiefs. It may be
noted that in 'Prunella, a Fantasy in Three
Acts,' by Lawrence Hausman and Granville
Barker, the authors emphasize the lyrical
element in their rococo story by scattering
riming stanzas at irregular intervals thruout
the dialog.

That the sonnet with its artificial and arbi-
trary scheme of intricately interlaced rimes
should be intercalated into dramatic dialog
may seem to modern readers a strange sug-
gestion. Yet Lope was here only recom-
mending a practise inherited from the me-
dieval mysteries wherein various fixt forms
of verse were frequently employed. Their
stanzaic rigidity did not prevent the deviser
of a French passion-play from utilizing the
triolet, the ballade, and even the long-sus-
tained and stately chant-royal; and the play-
wright availed himself of their aid not only
in passages of lyrical emotion but also in the
swift give and take of the intenser dramatic
moments of the action. This tradition of
the religious pieces was taken over by the
founders of the secular drama in most of the
modern languages, in English as well as in
French and in Spanish. Corneille's first play
'Melite' was composed especially to bring in

54

a sonnet; and even as late as the 'Cid' Cor-
neille cast his lyrical monologs into stanzas,
for which he was censured by the Abbe
d' Aubignac and by Voltaire; and Brunetiere
(in his annotated edition of Corneille's more
important plays) likens the lyrical soliloquy
of Rodrigue at the end of the first art to the
bravura solo of a tenor, coming down to the
footlights with his hand on his heart (p. 69).
Shakspere used the looser Elizabethan son-
net for the prolog to 'Romeo and Juliet'
spoken by Chorus; and Ben Jonson employs
it for the Prolog for the Court of his 'Staple
of News.' The incongruity of the fixt form
is least obvious when the sonnet is thus kept
outside the play itself and when it is utilized
only in the address to the audience before the
action begins. But Shakspere did not hesi-
tate to employ this fixt form inside the play;
in 'Love's Labor's Lost' (act iii, scene 2) and
also in 'All's Well that ends Well' (act iii,
scene 4) he casts a letter into fourteen lines,
with three riming quatrains and a terminal
couplet. And again in 'Romeo and Juliet'
where hero and heroine meet and fall in love
at first sight, the lyrical significance of this
meeting is suggested by the employment of
the fourteener, Romeo speaking the first
quatrain, Juliet the second, while the third
quatrain and the final couplet are shared be-
tween them, each taking in turn a line or
55

two. M. Rostand prefixes a sonnet to every
act of his 'Chantecler,' utilizing them for a
poetical description of the successive sets in
which the action of his lyrical play is sup-
posed to take place.

The ballade is to be found in two nine-
teenth century French plays, the 'Gringoire'
of Theodore de Banville, and the 'Cyrano
de Bergerac' of Rostand; but in both these
pieces it is frankly presented as what it is,
a poem composed in the fixt form by the hero
of the play. Maccoll suggests that sonnets
were introduced by the Spanish playwright
"to please the more cultivated part of the
audience"; and he remarks that "from their
nature [they] could be employed sparingly
not more than two or three sonnets were
usually put into a play." He notes that in
one oif Calderon's pieces, 'Gustos y Disgus-
tos' a duenna who is in doubt as to her imme-
diate duty, begins her speech "by saying
that she must either indulge in a soliloquy or
pronounce a sonnet. She elects the former,
and proceeds to soliloquize in redondillas."

28. Lord Holland has turned these lines
into English couplets:

None than myself more barbarous or more wrong,
Who hurried by the vulgar taste along,
Dare give my precepts in despite of rule.
When France and Italy pronounce me fool.
But what am I to do? who now of plays,
56

With one complete within these seven days,
Four hundred eighty-three in all have writ,
And all, save six, against the rules of wit.

It needs to be recorded that Lope's com-
mentators have been sadly put to it in their
endeavor to identify the half dozen of Lope's
plays which he here claims to be in accord
with the theories of the Classicists.

Attention has been called also to the simi-
larity of attitude between Lope here and that
taken by Webster in the preface to his 'White
Devil,' published in 1612, only three years
after the Spanish poem had been delivered:
"If it be objected that this is no true Dra-
matic Poem, I shall easily confess it; non
poles in nugas dicere plura meas Ipse ego
quam dixl; willingly, and not ignorantly, in
this kind have I faulted; for should a man
present to such an Auditory the most con-
tentious Tragedy that ever was written, ob-
serving all the critical laws, as height of style
and gravity of person, enrich it with the sen-
tentious chorus, and, as it were, life 'n Death
in the passionate and weighty Nuntius, yet
after all this divine rapture, O dura mess*
orum ilia, the breath that comes from the
incapable multitude is able to poison it; and
ere it be acted, let the author resolve to fix
to every scene this of Horace,

Haec Porcis hodie comedenda relinques."

B. M.

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1668

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The new art of writing
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